Fracture
by Dertt
Summary: A new criminal releases all of Batman's most formidable foes onto Gotham simultaneously, and personally recruits Scarecrow to assist in a campaign of destruction from which the city may never recover... Can you figure out what they're planning?
1. Prologue

Nyctophobia: a paralyzing fear of darkness, its name derived from the ancient Greek goddess of night.  
>Nyx was a primordial goddess, one of the first to exist in accordance with Greek mythology, and the dark was surely among the first things that primordial man came to fear… after all, one can never be entirely certain just what's lurking in the blackness of an unlit corner…<p>

Just three days prior, Jonathan Crane had determined that two of the guards patrolling his sector of Arkham suffered from this fear, and persuaded them to quit their jobs merely by reminding them just how dark the Asylum could get if a single fuse shorted.  
>They didn't need to be told twice of the horrors potentially awaiting them in a lightless corridor of Arkham Asylum, and while their timidity amused him, the loss of two guards was not at all amusing to Asylum staff, meaning that <em>he<em> was now the one spending the most time in the dark.

Crane's cell—roughly ten by ten and fitted only with the barest necessities of living—was indeed very dark at night, leaving only the sounds of footsteps to separate the experience from complete sensory deprivation… and now there were two less pairs of boots hitting the floors to assure him that he was not in some endless black void.  
>His dark world was utterly silent.<p>

However quiet it got, though, he simply couldn't shake the feeling that the happenings on Asylum grounds were less than placid—that this period of noiseless inactivity was the proverbial calm before the storm. As such, Crane felt it would be unwise to resign himself to sleep so soon after lights-out.  
>He simply sat on his cot in the all-encompassing blackness, skinny legs crossed at the ankles, hands in his lap, waiting for sound to resume.<p>

His patience was soon rewarded as a small click sounded from above him, signifying that the PA system was active—far too late for any official announcements.

"Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane," a voice issued from the speakers. It was deep and full of power, without being too gruff or masculine. The inflections were flat, but combined with the intonations, Crane knew, this suggested instability. This voice did not belong to any of the Asylum staff.

"That word gets tossed around a lot," the voice continued, "Insane. What does it even mean? Certainly from an etymological standpoint it means 'not sane,' but what exactly is sanity?"

At this point, Crane began to hear footsteps resounding through the hallway outside. Not the deliberate, pounding footsteps of a guard's boots, however—rather, the distinctive clopping of a woman's pointed heals… at a time when all the female psychiatrists fond of such footwear had retired to the safety of their homes.

As the heels became louder, the unofficial announcement extrapolated further:

"Is it a willingness to forego questioning the commonly held moral standards of where you live, a code which probably formed based on ideas once as radical and ultimately just as arbitrary as those now deemed insane? Why then is the notion of criminality distinct from insanity?"

An interesting point for the speaker to be making—especially given the context, but Crane couldn't help but wonder just where this was going as the heels grew steadily closer to his cell.

"How is Gotham, this city so rampant with 'sane' people committing crime, and whose only longstanding 'champion of justice' is a vigilante, operating sub-legally dressed as a giant bat… a city where the first legal defender insusceptible to corruption proved just as volatile—just as _insane_ as any inmate here… how is Gotham, this magnet for the most unsightly flotsam and jetsam, which spawned some of the world's most deranged and infamous individuals… fit to judge what is sane and what isn't?"

Crane noticed the voice starting to become more excited when it referenced Harvey Dent and the Batman. Additionally, he imagined that a lot of his fellow inmates must like what they were hearing, and he was personally rather fond of where the speech was inevitably leading.

"If differentiation from societal norms is what constitutes insanity, and our beloved city is so infested with such aberrations that the norm in Gotham _is_ insanity, yet the people here still have the audacity to label you insane… well, that's just insane!"

By this point, the voice had adapted some semblance of passion, however maniacal.  
>The heels had stopped right outside his cell; the voice proceeded:<p>

"The craziest city on Earth still not only believes there's such a thing as sanity, but it wants to say that the fine folks here at Arkham don't fit the bill. It's ridiculous.  
>It's ridiculous that in a madhouse, with patients outnumbering staff and the 'sane' being in the minority, that insanity is not the new sanity."<p>

There was a pause, possibly for dramatic effect. The histrionics in this town.

"Let the inmates run the asylum!"

The voice finished triumphantly as the PA system clicked off and the hall was filled with the mechanical whirring of every door on the cell block opening simultaneously, followed by the solid clink of them locking in place, and the cacophony of a hundred or so lunatics running free.  
>Light rushed into Crane's cell, threatening to blind him for a brief moment before his eyes adjusted and he saw the figure in his doorway: a woman, nearly silhouetted against the brightness of the hallway—the sterile, clinical white light reflecting off the sterile, clinical white walls.<br>Her sense of style was decidedly French, dressed in an impeccably fashionable ensemble with a color scheme that consisted solely of solid blacks on solid whites, save for the shear violet sash around her neck.  
>An oversized, though otherwise nondescript handbag was slung diagonally over her shoulders, and in her left hand she held what looked to be an aerosol canister.<p>

The woman glanced at him briefly, assessing his no doubt puzzled expression, before she turned her gaze to her handbag, sliding the spray can in and fumbling around for something else. She found whatever it was and ceased rummaging, grasping the object with both hands as she looked back at him.

"Professor Jonathan Crane," the woman spoke, offering up what she held. Her voice did not match her appearance. In fact, it wasn't a woman's voice at all: it was the voice from the announcement. Crane stood up from his cot, but made no further effort to move. Not until he figured out the game.  
>"Scarecrow?" the person said, inquisitively but not hesitantly. He stepped forward to observe what she was holding out to him.

It was his mask… well, something of a facsimile of his mask, though much more frightening than any previous design. The burlap was sewn together better, but with larger stitches. It had been coated in some sort of compound which gave it a joyously disturbing flesh-like quality.  
>Additionally, the eyes were now tears stretched over lenses which presented themselves as sunken black eyes, and the mouth was mechanized to drop open impossibly wide, revealing large, flat teeth almost caged by the stitched-together lips. A combination dispersalfiltration system for gas was integrated into the overall workings.

"Brilliant," he uttered, taking the mask from the person's hands. Pulling it over his head, he found that it fit well, if not perfectly. He adjusted the noose-like accessory on the neck and looked his benefactor in the eye no longer as Crane, but as the Scarecrow.

The person smirked wickedly.  
>"Would you like to participate in a little psychology experiment?"<p> 


	2. Journal Entry 1

Gordon:

I've been reviewing Asylum security footage from the other night, with little luck. There's a split second around midnight where a red-haired woman comes into frame, then after that it's only the audio feed. Ran the voice through the system and there was no match.

Additionally, I found this in an apartment in the Narrows, scattered among hundreds of other papers… sketches and diary entries like this, mostly.  
>Name on the lease is Louis Ciffer—obviously a pseudonym. Landlord couldn't offer a description of the tenant, but mentioned they were late on this month's rent and always paid in cash.<p>

I think you should take a look at this regardless: I'm almost positive it's related to the incident at Arkham.

-Batman

* * *

><p>A name.<br>A name to go with a face... a face the world may never know.  
>(A name is then needless)<br>The world will only know through interference.  
>Shaking things up, stirring up the pot. Disruption to command attention.<br>Force a change. Explode the archetype.  
>Incite a paradigm shift.<br>Bring Gotham to her knobby, scuffed-up knees.  
>Without being a revolutionary, I can be a crusader. Though not a Caped Crusader… things tend to snag.<p>

These people and their diseases.  
>What a wonderful world of woe they weave.<br>Every little black spot has its own befitting title so the big black bat can put them in rack and file.  
>So the winged freak can put them in Arkham, Blackgate, sort them by name and codename and date of birth and biological sex and species…<p>

The wild card, Joker. The straw man, Scarecrow. The house divided, Two-Face.  
>Tea parties with the Mad Hatter. Flower arranging classes with Poison Ivy.<br>Twenty questions with The Riddler. Bodybuilding with Bane.  
>Count, compare and contrast every meaningful scar with Zsasz. Such discussions to be had on scarring.<br>I'm going to scarify this city. Leave not just my mark, but a whole slue of marks in pretty little permanent patterns.

Fragment this precious status quo… the pseudo-law and semi-order Gotham's finest work so bloody hard to upkeep.  
>Raise a second Roman Empire with the remnants of the Falcone clan.<br>Shakedown the shareholders of Wayne Enterprises.  
>Wreck every racket being run.<br>Kill the umpire!

Make a difference, be noticed, be heard, be researched for decades to come!  
>Spawn copycats, inspire a social movement. Have a whole merry band of neo-futurists and lead a post-modern parade through post-apocalyptic Gotham streets!<br>Years away they'll be clamoring to interview the girl who finally wiped that stupid, smug smile off of Gotham's smarmy face.  
>Who wiped Gotham off the face of the map and rebuilt her as a dynamic utopia.<p>

A name. That's what the people remember. Killer Moth, Calendar Man, Tweedledum and Tweedledee… the whole jolly lot.

The people will remember Fracture.


	3. Folder 1a

Hello, Harvey.  
>Hello, Harvey.<p>

Remember the internal affairs offices? A pot of coffee, the one pack of cigarettes out of a carton that you managed to grab before Gilda hid it from you?  
>Long nights, stepping out every couple of hours into the unforgiving winds of a Gotham winter to smoke as you ran that "lucky" two-headed coin between the fingers of the opposite hand, the air so freezing cold that when you exhaled, you almost couldn't tell what was smoke and what was just the moisture on your breath freezing?<p>

Remember deliberation with the captain, carefully sniffing out only the most putrid bags of garbage in the dumpster the Gotham PD had become, listing them to the current DA only to hear "Dent, you two-faced son of a bitch" as the compactor crushed them?

Didn't do much good for your conscience, pretending to be everyone's friend, but you were the Pyrite City's golden boy, right Apollo?

Remember how sick you were getting of hearing about the Roman, and those distrustful glances you caught Gordon and the Bat exchanging on the rooftop a few days after Viti turned up with two.22 rounds in him?

Remember how much those self-righteous rock-steady bastards started to piss you off during that whole Holiday mess, always calling you up, calling you out, all the while Gilda called to wonder when exactly you'd next be coming home? You got so angry sometimes, it was almost like you'd become a different person, wasn't it?

Neither of you are the bad guy. Scarred side up might lead you to do some bad things, but you give everyone a fair, half-and-half, fifty-fifty chance. The odds of successfully prosecuting a serial rapist in this piss-sink—even for a smooth operator like either of you—are what, one in five? You know what has to be done, Harvey. As do you, Harvey.

The two main parties who vilified you in Dent's tragedy weren't Sal and Carmine. They weren't you and yourself. They were Jimbo and Bats.

Just something to discuss among yourself.

* * *

><p>I've got a fun game for you and your little lady, smiley.<br>It's a simple variation of monkey in the middle, using a bat in place of a simian.  
>All you need to do is track down the freak in the pointy-eared fetish gear.<br>You know the one I mean.

I promised the Scarecrow a brain, so all you have to do is keep the Bat's big black boots off the yellow brick road for right now.

I have something cool to give you if you can do me this favor.

Does the phrase "fork in a toaster" mean anything to you?


	4. Certifiably Insane

The sheet of paper in the side pocket of Jonathan Crane's brown tweed jacket felt unnaturally cold as he ran its folds between two spindly fingers before pulling it out, unfolding it, and holding it up at arm's length. With his free hand, he adjusted his glasses and glanced past the sheet to the number on the door.

This was the specified address: a low-rent high-rise on the east-end. The grimiest tumbler in the sewage processing plant the world knew as Gotham city... the city he'd called home for some-odd years since he'd finished putting fear into the sleepy north-Georgia town where he was raised.

Crane scanned the frame of the door from the top downward, examining the chipping eggshell white paint and the rotted wood the missing flecks exposed before resting his eyes on the mat where his feet were. He scooted his loafers to either side to read the message on it: "Home Sweet Tooth."

Droll surrealism. The Os in the word "tooth" had been transformed into sunglasses on a face with a sly smirk and a cigarette poking from its mouth.

He returned his head to an upright position, straightening his entire posture as he did so, and extended his hand to ring he doorbell. Realizing that the bell was assuredly non-functional, he retracted his hand and moved it toward the knocker. Upon wrapping his fingers around the metal U, he heard the doorknob jiggle and suddenly the door was jerked inward. Should have expected that.

Crane took a second to regain his composure and peered through the threshold. Standing just past it was the woman from the Asylum, same beautiful, bright red shoulder-length hair, pallid complexion, wide eyes... in the half-light Crane could just make out that they were two different colors: one blue, one green, speckled with goldenrod. A jagged scar crossed the green one, starting just above the left eyebrow and running to the top of her cheekbone.

Her? The person was now wearing a slim-fit black suit with white pinstripes over a white dress shirt with an inverted color scheme, a tie with diagonal black-and-white stripes tied neatly into a thick Windsor knot.

Their pants were tucked into charcoal combat boots that stopped halfway up the shins. "Professor Crane," they spoke, gravelly male voice in dissonant interplay with their otherwise elegant, maidenly features, "I trust you didn't have any trouble finding the place. I intentionally picked a relatively innocuous spot in what's undoubtedly the... scariest part of town."

The man fumbled in a pocket of his blazer for a moment and produced a pack of English Ovals and a Zippo lighter emblazoned with the image of a dead tree. He flipped open the pack, then the lighter, and pulled a cigarette from its spot, popping the cancer-stick into his mouth. He presented Crane the pack, offering one, which the professor declined with a two-handed "I don't partake" gesture. Accepting this, the man flicked the wheel on the lighter and lit the cigarette. He snapped the lighter shut with a flick of his hand—this allowed Crane to take note of the fact that further, parallel scarring covered the back of his hand, and that his nails were painted black and white, alternating from finger to finger.

After a brief period of watching the man smoke, Crane cleared his throat. "I believe you said something about a psychology experiment?"

The man smiled, allowing smoke to escape from his teeth... a devious, malicious grin that would have done the Joker himself proud. "Yes," he began. "I'm hoping to pull a Big Albert."

"Excuse me?" Crane intoned.

Cigarette quickly burning down to the butt, the man nonchalantly rolled up one sleeve and extinguished it noiselessly on the inside of his forearm. There were a number of other burns in various stages of healing which dotted the ivory flesh. He flicked the butt through the frame of the door and onto the balcony, then stepped aside. "Would you like to come inside and see my set-up, Dr. Crane?"

As a trained psychologist, Crane could see better than anyone, beyond the faintest shadow of a bat-shaped doubt, that this man was certifiably insane. He liked it.

Obliging the offer to look inside, Crane filed through the threshold and the man proceeded.

"Surely you know of the Little Albert experiment."

"Ah yes," Crane replied. "The infamous 1920 exercise in classical conditioning conducted by John Watson, where the subject was a little boy and the conditioned response they aimed for was fear. In which a pair of doctors instilled musophobia—fear of rats—in a child by playing a horrifying sound in tandem with an otherwise unrelated stimulus: a cute, harmless little white rat."

After getting past the distracting state of disarray the apartment was in, Crane could barely contain his excitement upon observing several tables piled with all the supplies he could ever need to produce multiple batches of especially potent fear gas.

"By 'Big Albert,' I presume—and wholeheartedly hope—that you intend to use my special talents to recreate this experiment on a grander scale."

This time it was Crane who smiled a wicked smile.

"Precisely." the man responded, joining Crane at the tables. "My next mark is Blackgate, and I'd like all the inmates there to suddenly develop a strong aversion to bats. One they can only respond to with violence. I've already set a rather twisted and talented duo out to divert any potential interlopers... I'm a big fan of their performances. Should be a barrel of laughs."

By the time Crane turned to face his newfound ally, the man had left his side, retrieved a glass of something and was sitting in a Victorian wing-back chair across the room, sipping from the glass, legs crossed.

"Can I get you a drink, doctor?" the man questioned, sloshing the liquid in his glass. "I've procured essentially all the accoutrements of a full bar. Man like you... cognac?"

"I'd love that, actually." Crane stated. "Does my benefactor have a name?"

"I have a few I go by." the man announced, moving to the kitchen to fetch Crane's drink. "Currently..." he continued as he poured a glass for the professor. "Last name Fir, like the tree." In an instant he was by the tables again, offering Crane the drink. "First name Lucille, like the ball."

"Lucy... Fir" the professor mouthed. "Clever."

"I thought so. Tell me... what do you believe constitutes 'sanity'? Is sanity an ability and desire to comply with what present-day society views as acceptable behaviour? The nature of a dynamic society is to gradually accept what, one hundred years ago, would have been 'insane' actions… it's a form of evolution, necessary for the advancement of culture.  
>The lack of tolerance in Gotham compared to the presence of 'insanity' means we're drastically behind the times as it is."<p>

He set the glass alongside the chemicals on the table and returned to the chair with silent, animal grace.

"Is sanity shared perceptions and interpretations of the world? If so, does embracing subjectivity make one insane? How is mass hysteria distinguished from sanity?  
>Let's induce some mass hysteria. Unite this city <em>in sanity<em>."


	5. Folder 1b

Batman, we received an anonymous tip today that Terrence Wolfe—the suspected gunrunner Vice has been trying to nail—had just been murdered in the very warehouse that we've been trying to find. Stabbed in the neck.  
>Unfortunately, to our concern, the place had been cleared out. Whole mess of handguns, SMGs and automatics missing.<p>

There was an office-like room in the back. It seems that Wolfe was a very paranoid man: on his computer, he saved typed transcripts of every conversation he ever had with a customer. This was still on the screen when homicide arrived:

* * *

><p><strong>R:<strong>I need a new gun.

**W:** May not be much help. What're you in the market for today?

**R: **I think... a .500 magnum.

**W:** Of course you'd need a frigging handcannon. I just got in a few different S&W500s.

**R: **Perfect. Kevlar wouldn't stack up well against a close-range blast from one of those.

**W:** Well in case you can't get in too close, I have some nice magnum rounds with tungsten penetrators; I can toss in a couple of complementary speedloaders with your purchase.

**R:** Put me down for one of the four-inch barrels. Those 8.38 ones are just tacky.

**W:** You know there's a ten-incher you need a goddamn shoulder strap for.

**R:**Huh. You know, if you're still taking heat from GPD, I have a couple of ideas on how to move your stock.

THANKS FOR THE GUNS, WOLFE.  
>-R<p>

* * *

><p><em>From the desk of Police Commissioner James Gordon<br>_

* * *

><p>Gordon,<p>

Thank you for the intel. I trust vice has enough to work with re: Wolfe's records. Rest assured that I'll assist in the investigation of the homicide and disappearance of the weapons.

I returned to the apartment on the Narrows to see if the tenant had been by again, and id not, what other evidence I could gather. There was a new note, right where I'd found the journal entry.  
>I think she's targeting me, Gordon.<p>

-Batman

* * *

><p>I left this here because I knew you would find it. You're good at what you do. So am I.<br>I just wanted you to know that I know who you are.  
>That is to say, I know the type. You're a smart man. A sick man. A bad man.<br>A bat man.  
>I'm a bad man, too, you see. Don't get me wrong: I'm a good girl... but I'm a bad, bad man.<p>

Moreover, I respect you. Not what you do, per se, but you as an individual. A man, a myth, a gargoyle guarding Gotham... a Dark Knight. I admire your skill. Your resolve. Your unbridled obsessiveness. Your tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top theatrics. You're a good performer, and I'll be damned if you don't know how to make an entrance.

Problem is, you're so easily upstaged. Part of me wants to blame the costume department—all that black, the swirling black cape, the silly black cowl... there's a deeply lamentable lack of contrast. The kind that makes things dramatic. But you're an allegorical character, aren't you? A huge, lumbering, Gothic figure that embodies the darkness of Gotham; that encapsulates the shadows pervading the streets you patrol. You're the man in black.

So I need to play the lady in white. To be the one who brings light to the darkness.

See, I believe in equilibrium. I can't very well be a criminal if there's no crime fighters. Anyway, as your good friend Harvey Dent might agree, everything in Gotham is based on duality.  
>Why, even you have two sides to you… your face is divided right down the center by that cowl. The monster, and then the man. The man, and then the scared little boy.<p>

The main issue here, as I see it, is thus: you're too damn committed. You've probably completely lost whoever there is under the cowl; lost your humanity in the iconography of the bat. Lost your self in your shadow, to speak in terms of Jungian archetypes... and shadows? Well, they're two-dimensional.  
>If there's one thing I can't stand in a good drama, it's a two-dimensional character.<p>

Everything about my aesthetic is based on chiaroscuro: varying degrees of lightness and darkness that coalesce to communicate depth and dimension.  
>To create depth in our fair city, I have to serve as the lightbringer... and my time to shine is nigh, Batman. No ifs, ands, or buts, Bats.<p>

Smart man you are—and here's those archetypes again—you probably know who the lightbringer is: the devil.  
>Furthermore, you can be sure that even if I have to employ the scarecrow, the trickster, Apollo, and numerous damsels in distress, I'm going to show you that the shadow can't exist in this absence of the self.<p>

Who exactly would you be without your mask?


End file.
